Reserve capacity and exit choosing in pedestrian evacuation dynamics

Abstract

A modified cellular automata model is proposed to simulate the pedestrian evacuation behavior in a room with multiple exits by considering the reserve capacity of the exit. The main idea is motivated by the original concept of minority game, which means less congested exits may be preferentially chosen together with the floor fields. The model outperforms previous ones under the condition in which pedestrians are distributed heterogeneously. Simulation results show that wise exit choosing with the consideration of reserve capacity may reduce the evacuation time apparently, which is more realistic. Furthermore, the impacts of the room geometry and parameter settings are investigated extensively.